Navigating microaggressions in the workplace

Workplaces

Navigating microaggressions in the workplace

Microaggressions are a gift. What do you do with a gift you don’t want? Don’t take it. Walk right past that stuff.

For those of you without medium, here’s my friend link.

This article talks about:

• Definition of Microaggressions
• Microaggressions in STEM
• Recognizing and reframing microaggressions to your advantage
• Microaggressions as a warning of a toxic workplace
• How to turn the tide on microaggressions in the workplace

Definition of Microaggressions

Microaggressions are unacknowledged intentional and nonintentional verbal or nonverbal behaviors that communicate negative, hostile, and derogatory messages to people.

They can take on the form of (1) microassaults (old-fashioned discrimination) such as name-calling, exclusion/avoidance, or purposeful discrimination; (2) microinsults which are subtle snubs that communicate a covert but insulting messages demeaning the person’s identity; or (3) microinvalidations that exclude, negate, dismiss the thoughts, feelings, or experiences. (1, 2)

Microinvalidations are considered to be the most harmful of microaggressions on account of the negative impact on psychological health, leading to depression, anxiety, and burnout. They are the most pervasive type of microaggression in the workplace and are not dependent on a person’s minority status, as I will detail below.

The reason we fall victim to microaggressions in the real world is that they are perceived as minimal harm and unintentional expressions of bias.

The hardest part is — responding to microaggressions is an invitation to be gaslit.

Microaggressions are hard to prove, and the aggressor will apologize for the offense while labeling you as overreactive.

Microaggressions in STEM

Here are some types of microaggressions that BIPOC, marginalized, and minority people face on a daily basis.

Are you the diversity hire?

This question is never asked with positive intent.

Think of a ‘team’ in popular media with its token female, a person of color, LGBTQ, or a handi-capable person. Fabulous actors and actresses representing every combination possible boiled into one role for the sake of diversity.

This question is used with prejudice to justify dismissing your skills and voice. In its oversimplification of a complex problem, it questions the acumen of a minority to have a seat at the table.

As you answer this question, consider the following:

Women are less likely to apply to ‘stretch’ roles, more senior than their current position, and more likely to apply to positions considered ‘safe’ (Source). Women and minorities typically negotiate for 30% less than their worth.

Am I competent enough or overqualified for the role I have? Am I being compensated for what I’m worth? How does my salary stack up to the average at this company? What are the salary practices of this company compared to others of the same caliber? What concessions did I make in my negotiation?

Hiring is a subjective process navigated through your employer’s interview process.

What are my employer’s hiring practices, and how do I weigh against my peers? Were there any red flags?

Women make up 28% of the workforce in STEM. Half of the world’s population is female. 1 in 6 people experience a disability. LGTBQ is actively being normalized in NA, the UK, and Europe. Visible minorities comprise 40–50% of Canada’s population as of 2021.

In small businesses, visible minorities are 100% likely to be asked to sit for a marketing photo campaign showcasing the diversity of the workplace.

It is what it is.

I have had to carefully reset the expectations of an over-enthusiastic marketing team on at least one occasion. I am guilty of all of the above.

Regrets? No. Thanks to many microaggressions over a lifetime, I suffered from imposter syndrome and failed to see my strengths. I wanted to get my foot in the door and I needed to prove myself by getting experience and climbing the ladder. While my kids were young I suffered from a burn out cycle before discovering that I could have it all — flexible hours, high wage, and a challenging and energizing career.

Underestimating your technical skill

Mansplaining is widespread in STEM. This microaggression serves to gaslight women into defending their technical and professional qualifications.

Most women in tech reside in sales, design/UX, marketing, HR, and Operations. Why is that?

Women as technical product managers took a hit when in the mid-2000s, Google changed its requirements for PMs, making it a boys club. Since then, women have had to ‘prove’ themselves following male exclamations of “How can you be a product manager? You don’t have a computer engineering degree!” and normalization of said requirements on job postings.

Consider how men have achieved the stereotype of technical experts. Computer engineering was introduced in education in 1971. Add 40+ years as a male-dominant field in an era when boys were encouraged and expected to tinker with computers. As of 2022, only 20% of computer science and undergraduate engineering degrees went to women in the US. Hiring a well-experienced PM (or developer) who started with a computer engineering or computer science degree with more than ten years of experience will favor men.

A rose by another name? The woman in the room may have excelled in numerical and differential equations, systems thinking, and programming. She graduated with a science, engineering, or mathematics degree. Is she less technical-minded?

Changes to equity need to come from recruiters and managers.

Appearances, do they matter?

“pretty but smart” We all agree pretty smart is the more appropriate phrase. There is this stereotype of the technically minded woman being judged on her looks. In Apple+’s Mythic Quest, Poppy is frequently derided for her attire and lack of personal care — as if this is the mark of a woman in tech.

Trust that other women and some men will judge you on your attire and bearing. People tend to judge based on their demons, and a woman who spends 2 hours dedicated to her grooming routine will surely notice the gray in your hair and the lack of rouge on your lips.

I’m guilty of being the woman reverse-judging another for her 3-inch heels worn for an interview — granted, I was impressed by her endurance and dedication, but self-reflection taught me this was me sizing her up as to whether or not she could fit my tribe or not. We still hired her, and she was terrific.

Know your work environment and be consistent in your attire. Don’t dress to please anyone but yourself.

Behavioral Style

Women and men are described in different terms for the same behavior.

The most frequent example that I have experienced and witnessed is when a woman is called opinionated, domineering, or argumentative. The same behavior in men is described as “he knows his mind, and he’s experienced, he knows what he’s talking about.”

The tone of voice or how you carry yourself in meetings is subjective to whether or not you are male or female. A quiet woman is a wallflower. An educated woman is aggressive.

Every woman described as aggressive is firm on the matters she knows as true and flexible on everything else.

There’s no win here. Just be yourself, own your truth, and speak your mind.

Hypocrisy in the workplace

The irony with receiving commentary on behavioral style is the same manager criticizing your aggressiveness will also be asking you to mentor and coach people into better performance, empowerment in their roles, or improving feedback loops.

Differences in lifestyle

Cy Wakeman illustrates feedback from her boss criticizing her preparedness in the morning (need source). When she reflected on her reality, she could see that his insensitive comments were made in complete ignorance of her messy mom-of-kids home life. Like most women who support a family and have a full-time career, she put a lot of effort into making it look like she had everything together despite the crazy on the back burner. She recognized the need to stop grading herself based on another’s yardstick.

While it's no one’s business what unique challenges you have in your private life, it's often the case that minorities will keep the hard-to-explain private. The consequence is to receive less empathy from the majority and to receive unintentional insensitivity.

Growing up in Toronto in the 90s, the rage was multiculturalism and educating people about new norms. Today, it's just as crucial for people in your workplace to be aware of the challenges that make your experience different.

Sometimes it's also correcting wrong assumptions, such as how motherhood makes you more effective in the workforce, not less.

It's necessary to speak up and educate your peers when you experience life differently than others.

Recognizing and reframing microaggressions to your advantage

What most of these comments come down to are challenges that affect your ability to feel acknowledged, seen, heard, and appreciated.

Women, more than men, face an uphill battle with microaggressions scattered in feedback on their performance, behavior, and style. It is essential to recognize and reframe the feedback for what it is, identify the type of people who give it, and decide for yourself what is important to heed and what should be left on the table like a forgotten secret Santa gift.

If in doubt, ask for an outline of the situation prompting the feedback: Outline the facts around your performance, ask questions to shed light on assumptions your manager made, and identify what you need to improve. Give your leadership feedback in turn to (1) provide facts, (2) correct wrong assumptions, and (3) how they can improve in giving feedback next time.

Microaggressions, by definition, are personal attacks. In the next section of this article, I talk about how these microaggressions stem from being different from or not accepted by the group.

Microaggressions as a warning of a toxic workplace

“The ‘problem’ woman of colour in the workplace” — Is eye-opening evidence of how microaggressions can affect anyone being ousted from their team. This is not limited to ‘white leadership’ hiring a tokenized hire, giving repetitive injury & microaggressions only to deny their biases when confronted.

It occurs when you fall out; or are being pushed out of the tribe, group, or ’circle of trust’ for reasons unknown.

That you happen to be a person who beats to your own drum, has the confidence to speak your truth, and may or may not follow the will and immediate needs of the leadership team may actually be secondary. As a minority we may be too quick to judge based on our skin colour when in fact it could be budget for your salary, other’s sensitive egos, existing politics or power plays, high stress or high stake environment, tone set by a board of directors, or simply an immature leadership team. There’s an arcane pattern of‘white men and token woman’ in boardrooms but ulitmately all leadership teams are human. Fact: They hired you. Diverse teams sensitive to the need for diversity, equity, and inclusion are not exempt.

To illustrate, you can start with either of the following two scenarios:

1. A company hires you. You spend the first couple of months learning the lay of the land. In that time, you are treated with the generosity of a rockstar who will accomplish many things. Because the amount of information to learn is exponential, you don’t know what you don’t know. As you start meeting with your boss, you provide honest feedback from your experience and gut. Initially, this feedback is welcomed. At some point, for the reasons outlined above, the wind changes direction.
2. You’ve been working at a company for a long time in a high capacity, with the hire of a new director or a change in management or board of directors. The wind changes direction.

You discover that you don’t have a seat at the table. There is a barrier to being a part of the ‘inner circle,’ or there are players who see you as a threat, intentionally laying holes in your onboarding or in your ability to connect. You find yourself ill-informed. This is further illustrated in Lilly Singh’s experience with late-night comedy.

As you fall victim to being removed from the ‘inner circle’ — you may naively assume this is an oversight or respect for your busy schedule. It’s not, it's a microaggression. You are being set up to fail. The result has already been decided upon, and your boss has started cherry-picking information to confirm their bias.

You may be asked repeatedly what you are bringing and to define your role. With your limited understanding of the landscape (early days), your answers are frequently criticized, and you are told you need to be aligned. At some point, the misalignment translates to being criticized for your communication style. Somehow, even though you are transparent about your objectives and KPIs — nothing you do is good enough. You’re chasing a moving target that you fleetingly see during your 1–1s which occur infrequently, if at all.

Your value and work are not acknowledged. There is a fault found in everything you say. Microaggressions you will experience in this scenario are frequent comparisons to colleagues, criticism of your choice of workload, and the most obvious — a critique of your communication style or lack thereof. Pray you don’t fall for it! Recall microinvalidations exclude, negate, and dismiss the thoughts, feelings, or experiences of a person.

One of three things can happen:

1. If you’re lucky, your gut tells you the fit for this role is not right and that your workplace has turned toxic. You recognize that there’s more going on here than can be changed. You decide to leave a job with integrity intact and knowledge of your capabilities despite all the perks, including great colleagues, fascinating work, high salary, flexible work hours, remote job, or what have you.
2. If you’re unlucky, you run yourself into burnout by trying to meet their unobtainable goals paired with a downward fall in your confidence. The company eventually lets you go. You have an uphill battle to decompress, recognize your courage and awesome, and remember what you loved about your work to continue your career.
3. You keep calm and persevere in communicating with your manager. Through trial and error, you find the cadence of giving and receiving feedback that works to correct assumptions and improve your relationship with your manager. You turn the situation around not only because of your persistence but also because of the open and flexible mindset of your manager.

How to turn the tide on microaggressions in the workplace

What can you do to help or change the situation when you are a second-hand witness to microaggressions in the workplace? You can either confront or stay quiet, the choice is yours. While you can’t change people, you can be an influence on the way they think and act.

• Recognize toxic behavior. Make a mental note of the toxicity of the commentary being made. Among peers, acknowledge that it will be you they are talking about next with others.
• Actively seek out the truth in facts and speak up. Correct assumptions in statements or comments you witness to counteract the ‘cherry picking’ used to fulfill bias. Know your audience. Tread carefully around egos and politics.
• Reframe or rephrase negative feedback to be constructive. Be a filter in the immediate by rephrasing what you recognize as microaggressions. Show people how to communicate better. As a manager, set expectations up and down.
• Normalized behavior is contagious. Be cautious of how an atmosphere that normalizes microaggressions can affect you. You do not need to be a silent witness. Without judgment, you can call out the bullying or incivility you witness to the perpetrator. Blow the whistle and inform HR or senior leadership. Make it known that this type of behavior is unacceptable in the workplace.

Christine Porath addresses this topic as ‘incivility in the workplace’ and discusses the effects of witnessing incivility in her Ted Talk linked below.

“Either you lift people up by respecting them, making them feel valued, appreciated and heard — or you hold people down by making them feel small, insulted, disregarded or excluded.” — Christine Porath

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Some fun videos I uncovered while researching this topic.

How do we use language and vocal sound? Professor of Neuroscience Sophie Scott gives an upbeat and informative talk on the effortful and delicate nature of speech; how it is used socially and between genders. (Of relevance her discussion how men and women interpret each other’s language from 9:00 minutes)

TLDW; men talk more than women, and all conversation is gossip. As you get older, you isolate people socially because you have difficulty hearing what’s being said. The advice is to keep talking.

As a transgender woman, Paula Stone Williams has lived on both sides, “and the differences are massive!” In this funny and insightful talk, Paula shares her wisdom for all.

TLDW; The more you’re questioned on your knowledge, the more you doubt yourself. You don’t have to apologize for being right. Level the playing field to give women more equity — honor the journey of another. Be curious about the shoes you don’t wear. Be your authentic self.

Thomas Chamorro-Premuzic identifies how people who aggress are promoted and suggests management be more cautious and performance-data-driven in assessing whom they promote versus whom they demote in organizations. They must recognize bias and actively use facts to disprove so that aggressive and micromanaging people are not rewarded with promotion.